La Rose Agroforestry Update

Starting a business is notoriously difficult and undeniably risky. Some businesses – restaurants, bars, hotels, just to name a few – are avoided because of their infamous record of seemingly inevitable failure. But farming perhaps takes the top position for “bad business ideas” in the popular imagination. All of the external factors – weather, wavering demand, the short shelf-life of produce – make farming seem like a preposterous proposition.

When I first embarked on my personal farming journey more than two years ago, I was given a lot of feedback about my decision. First of all, farming has a reputation of being a (at best) “breaking even” kind of business. The popular press talks about farmers staying afloat through subsidies and kick-backs. In Ghana, where I farm, no such mechanisms are in place to buffer a farmer from economic disaster. Aside from subsidized fertilizers, agro-chemicals, and hard-to-get seedlings, the government doesn’t do much to make sure a farmer will be protected in times of crisis. And that’s only if you are farming a cash crop that the government can reap some revenue from. 

But if farming is done well and envisioned as a long-term activity, it can be very enriching. I don’t mean this just economically, but also spiritually and socially. To work with other farmers is to work with the craftsmen of our contemporary society. The small-scale farmer is the origin of the "modern" world. The native Americans who domesticated maize in Meso-America, the Mesopotamians who domesticated various edible grasses in the fertile crescent, the West Africans who domesticated yams and oil palms, the south Pacific islanders who domesticated taro root – these were all small-scale farmers who selected better and more nourishing varieties of crops until towns and cities grew and populations expanded. Farmers created this world that we live in. To work with them has been the most enlightening and inspiring experience of my life.

But I don’t want to digress too much here. I want to provide an update on the state of La Rose Agroforestry here in the Volta Region of Ghana.

In mid-2011, La Rose Agroforestry started with eight acres of land in Guaman-Odumase. We then went on to purchase 20 more acres of land in Guaman-Oqui Kator and Atakrom. As of now, all 28 acres of that land is under cultivation with cocoa, plantains, ginger, and bananas. We also have another 15 acre plot of land that remains fallow in the hills of Ketse-Nkwanta along the border with Togo.

The 28 acres of land under production, in terms of crops, breaks down like this:

Cocoa: 12,200 saplings (most of which are nearing their first yielding period)

Plantains: 10,000 corms (each corm containing three or four “shoots” that will yield one head of plantains each)

Bananas: 2,200 corms (see above)

Palm Trees: 70 (to be uprooted and tapped for palm wine, and then replaced with cocoa and plantains)

Ginger: 3 acres, planted with over 27 kilograms of rhizome cuttings

Intercropped among these five major crops, we also have taro root, cassava, papaya, mango, and kola trees.

So far, we are producing revenues of around $2000 per month in plantain sales. We also get a further $200-$300 from selling bananas. Our expected revenue for our first year of cocoa sales (probably one year from now) will be about $15,000. That number will increase as the trees become more productive. Ginger has a return value of %500, so the $1500 we invested should yield about $7500 within seven or eight months.

How to Protect Yourself From Crop Thieves *WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES*

Have an itch to crop raid? Want to steal someone's bananas or plantains? Want to profit off of someone's hard work by simply just taking their produce? Think twice.

West Africa is famous for its traditional religion and rites. Togo and Benin in particular are famous for being the "heartland" of voodoo (as it is called in the Americas) and in Africa the heartland of "juju." When I informed my farm hands and supervisors that I would be leaving for six months, right as the major plantain harvests are starting to come to fruition, they all immediately instructed me to perform the necessary rites to secure my land and scare away/punish thieves.

So at 6 A.M this morning I drove my motorcycle on a narrow and dusty path to a mud-brick house on the outskirts of Attakrom. One of my farm hands, Francis, met me on the way and told me how to get there. He had a black polythene bag with him and sat on the back of my bike pointing at diversions in the path here and there. When we pulled up in front of the house, a middle-aged man emerged from behind a curtain and asked his daughter to bring us a bench. His son and some friends explained to me in Ewe that they had heard I needed protection for my farm when I was gone. When I answered "yes," they brought out a jerry can of palm wine and poured a libation invoking the ancestors to mark the beginning of the rite.

I had been told a few days before that I would need a few "things" for the rite. The list was pretty atypical: a dog's head, a small black goat, a baby chicken, a full grown chicken, a machete that has been worked down to its stub, a bottle of gin, black cloth, red cloth, and some black and red yarn. Luckily, all of these things are easy to come across in Ghana.

I was told that the rite they were going to perform would protect my farm from thieves and people who wanted to dispute land sales. When I asked them how this protection worked, I heard various things. One example was a story about someone entering a farm and digging up some cassava. As he hurried away from the farm, his body seized and he became paralyzed - stuck on the farm and unable to move. The next morning, when the farm owner came to do some weeding, they found the man laying on the ground with a bag full of stolen cassava and panic in his eyes. In order to have the spell broken, the thief had to be carried to the jujuman and agree to pay a hefty fine before the curse was removed. Other examples were far less gentle on the thieves: getting serious diarrhea, going insane, being attacked during the night by angry spirits, or being attacked by snakes.

Yeah, think twice.

Even though I am very skeptical about such things, I decided that at least it would send a clear message to anyone who might think about stealing from my farm. But as the rite was being performed, the jujuman told me to pick up the chicken and tell the gods what I wanted to be accomplished through this ritual. So yes, at one point on this 2nd of January 2013 I could have been seen talking to a chicken. The odd thing was that the chicken seemed to be listening - looking me squarely in the eyes and not shrieking as it had been doing moments before. After I finished telling the chicken what I wanted to be done, the jujuman rang a bell and the chicken went limp and lifeless on the floor of the house. How the hell did that happen?

The follow-up was even more spectacular. The small black goat had its throat cut and its blood splattered over the sacrificial items. The dog's head was picked clean and its skull placed at the center of the house.More blood was poured on top of the dog’s skull and the old worn-out machete. The jujuman’s wife threw some cowrie shells and announced that the ritual was successful and that no crop raiders could be expected anytime soon and that tomorrow I should come and ingest the fried and ground remains of all the ritual items.

So if you’re in Ghana, think twice before entering a La Rose Agroforestry Limited plot and helping yourself to some bananas!